Log in

Frozen in Time, chapter 1 of 18

﻿Warning!Enclosed is a fic. I’m rather proud of this fic. Not for the way it started which was strictly on a lust level and a rather innocent attempt at fitting into a fandom I as yet knew nothing about, but for the way it ended up in the last few chapters. It’s broader though not as deep as most of the stories I like which explore this relationship. Most people find this fun, lusty, and ultimately thought-provoking. Some think it is positively hateful.Warning!This fic includes het and slash, as well as a trio. Some people can’t stomach one or another. However, the het is somewhat less offensive as well as less graphic than most fanfic het. (It’s the male bodies I’m interested in.) Some people call it a MarySue on the basis that it does include an OFC, others have argued vociferously that it isn’t on the basis that the OFC is not supernaturally lovely, doesn’t have super powers, and is not all-knowing. Does she get the guy in the end? Well ... not really. The whole point of the story, after all, is DomLijah.

Warning!There is some stuff in chapters 3 through 5 which some people interpret as a medical procedure and others as non-con sex or even rape. It is meant only to be realistic.

Warning!The story starts out introducing the OFC. Some people find it slow reading and others interesting. If you don’t like the OFC, you will likely not like the fic.

﻿Warnings: &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Non-con sex. Unconsciousness. Threesome, het and slash sex.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Toward the end there's some philosophy.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp If you don't like the first chapter, you won't like the rest.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Contains opinions, assumptions and situations that some might find offensive. &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Medical issues are based on my experience with frostbite, information from the internet, and commonsense. They are pretty much correct, but I have ignored a thing or two. It is, however, a whole lot more accurate than "Forever Young."&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp This is entirely written, so you don't need to worry about whether it gets finished. However, while I certainly appreciate that not everyone gives feedback to every chapter (including me), if I don't get much of any positive feedback, I will probably lose interest in posting.

Rated: Series: NC-17, Chapter 1: GType: RP het/slashPairing: EW/DM/OFCDisclaimer: This is fiction. And not intended even to be wise. While some of these characters may be based on real people, I don't personally know them. I made it all up out of my perverted little head.&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp No, I don't make any money at this.Archive: No, please.Feedback: Please feed me. Praise is lovely. Constructive criticism is valued. If you find nothing of value in it, though, please don't bother telling me. You wouldn't be the first person.

Beta: The wonderful elfellon111, whose attention to detail has inspired me to be a better writer.﻿

Frozen in TimeA DomLijah Story

by TaroDragon

Part 1Anything's Possible

February, 2003

The darkness was comforting. Warm, after the cold pain that soaked through his bones. There was a spot of light, and he found himself drifting toward it, mildly curious. The spot grew, the intensity of the glow deepening, so that all about him was white light, so pure and brilliant that it was overwhelming. There was no thought about anything, just the bright warmth and the love that came from that being.

Yes, it was a being, he realized. Conditioning supplied ‘angel’. The angel was speaking to him, but it was difficult to understand the communication. “Am I dead?” he asked.

“We won’t let you die,” the angel said. “You have work to do yet.”

But his thinking was working better now. He knew the condition of his body. “I’m already dead,” he said.

“Help is on the way. Just accept the love. Trust that it will be all right.”

The angel encircled him, surrounding him with the light. “Just a little more now,” the angel said, and picked him up. He could feel himself being carried, he could feel warmth - a sensation he had not hoped to experience again. “Just accept it,” the angel repeated. “You have work to do yet.”

Blackness enfolded him again.

The car was almost invisible in the snow, and with her eyes busy trying to simply keep track of the road, Ellen almost missed it. Even looking straight at it, it was only an extra blob of white in all the white darkness. But she braked gently and put on the 4-ways without pulling over. No chance of anyone coming up behind her.

“No chance either of anyone actually being in that car, idiot,” she muttered, shivering, as she got out into the bitter cold and traipsed across the road. “It’s not supposed to snow when it’s this cold,” she groused.

The front of the expensive-looking car was inextricably melded with the guard rail. Even if the engine would run, it would have been impossible to move it without equipment. It was totally covered with snow. Whoever spun out here was long gone. But still …

She dusted snow off the driver’s window and rapped sharply. And was spooked by the unexpected response of movement. The door cracked open and she jumped back. A man’s head emerged. “You got a phone?” he asked through chattering teeth.

“No. Doesn’t matter, you won’t get a tow truck out here tonight.”

A woman’s voice responded from the interior. “We can’t just stay here all night.”

“No. You certainly can’t. It’s nearly zero. You’d freeze. I’ll take you with me where I’m going and you can …”

The woman’s voice interrupted. “Where are you going?”

“To a friend’s house, about thirty miles east.” Ellen opened the door to see the woman she was speaking with, and in the weak interior light was met by grey eyes in a middle-aged face, teeth also chattering.

“We were headed west, to a ski resort. We have a reservation.”

“Hmpfh. The resort is another seventy miles and probably closed anyway.”

The woman hesitated, then suddenly thrust out her right hand. “I’m Susan,” she said firmly, as though that was all the information Ellen should need. “We have a reservation. We’re expected. We must get there!”

“I’m Ellen,” Ellen replied automatically. “It just isn’t going to happen. I’m going east. It’s my car that works, and I think I’m willing to take you with me.” Ellen leaned in to the car to follow the woman’s glance to the back seat. Two boys sleeping, huddled together for warmth. And the stink of beer.

“You guys haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“Oh, just the boys,” the woman responded. “They were cold.”

Ellen eyebrows arched quizzically. “You don’t drink when you’re cold. That’s a good way to freeze to death.”

The woman looked startled then cast a frightened glance to the back seat. “They’re just sleeping ...” Ellen, alerted by the woman’s fear, yanked open the back door, reached in, and shook the nearest body.

“Sleeping, my foot!” she growled , the beginnings of horror clenching her gut. She touched the whiteness of a face. “They’re stone cold!” She looked angrily Susan, and vaguely noticed that the woman’s reaction was odd.

“They’re not dead ….?” But somehow, though the woman’s fear was genuine, she didn’t act like a mother whose sons might be gone.

“Probably not. They’re young. How long have you been out here?”

“Maybe three hours, I think,” the man responded. “No one stopped, and then there wasn’t anymore traffic. And the phone apparently got damaged in the crash.” Ellen was only half listening, struggling to extricate one of the boys, and glad she’d taken up the ‘new me’ exercising and weight lifting. “Here, what are you doing?” the man added.

“We are, of course,” Ellen puffed, “going to get all of you in my car. I think I’ve got this one. You get the other one.” She was surprised that suddenly the boy seemed much lighter than she expected. She had thought at first glance that he was probably seventeen or eighteen, but now figured he must be much younger. Easily, she carried him across to her car and kicked the door. Her daughter opened it.

“Get out, Becky. You sit in front.”

Becky got out of the way, and Ellen wrangled her unwieldy burden in, realizing as she did so that the body was not really stiff. She tried to assess what that would mean, but didn’t get past the thought that he must still have some body heat. She turned around to evaluate the situation, as the man began crossing the road with the other boy, closely trailed by the woman. The man was trim, wiry-looking, tall. The woman, while not young or slender, was also trim. Of the two, she probably gave off more body heat. In any case, the man was skinnier - easier to cram into the front seat.

“Becky, you sit in front in the middle. You,” she turned to Susan, “sit in back between them.”

“Are they okay?”

“They’re alive. I think. They’re not okay.” Then to the man, “You sit in front.”

“I think we should both sit in back with them …” the man began.

Ellen bit back a sharp retort. “You wouldn’t fit,” she said. “Would you just get in the car and get the doors closed?” The man hesitated another moment but then squeezed in next to Becky and closed the door. Ellen opened her door after making sure that the other side was closed.

She got in, adjusted her seat with deliberation, made sure that she wasn’t too crowded for steering control, then just sat still a moment, thinking. Finally she said, “I gather you’re from a warm climate?”

“Yes.” From Susan.

“People from around here were either off the roads hours ago, or they know how to drive in this stuff and are prepared. For instance, I have three special blankets and a sleeping bag in the trunk, and a supply of chocolate bars in the glove box.” Looking at the man, she asked, “You didn’t tell me your name.”

“Bob.”

“Bob, why don’t you get out a chocolate bar for you and Susan?”

Bob immediately opened the glove box and found a bar, but even as he unwrapped it he demanded, “Why don’t you get the blankets?”

“Okay, Bob, it’s like this. Those two are so cold that they’re unconscious. I do know a little about this sort of thing. I was looking up frostbite on the internet awhile ago, because I have trouble with my hands in the cold, and I read a little about hypothermia while I was at it because it was interesting. Now, I know enough to not make too many stupid mistakes. I also know enough to be scared shitless. We could so easily make a stupid mistake that will kill them.”

Susan interrupted. “You’ve got to be kidding. They’ll warm up in here.”

“Yes, they might. Depends on how cold they are. But that’s one reason not to add blankets. The car is warmer than they are.” She reached over to the controls and turned the heat down and the fan off. “Now that I think about it, though, the body heat in the car is probably enough heat for now. Warming the skin too fast can kill.” Susan grunted as though to interrupt, but Ellen raised her voice a bit and went on.

“Speaking of which, while it’s not an issue right now, I remember that what kills a lot of people who looked like they were going to make it is just being upright. I’d have to look it up again, but there’s something about sitting up or warming too fast ... If I’d thought about it sooner, you two probably shouldn’t have stood up to walk over here, but then, I wouldn’t have been able to carry you. And if your teeth are chattering, you’re probably all right. But the point there is that even people who are still conscious frequently die if they move around.”

“How can that kill?” Susan demanded

“Let’s see.” Ellen reflected for a moment, trying to recall what she had read. “If I remember, it sends cold blood from the skin to the organs.” “Can I use your phone,” Susan asked, “to tell the ski lodge we won’t be there?”

“I really don’t have a cell phone. Costs money.”

She started the car, heaved a sigh. “One other thing. I’m an excellent driver. I’ve driven in worse storms and on much slipperier roads. But if anybody touches me, or yells, or does anything to distract me, that person can walk. I will be going very slowly. Don’t bother asking me to hurry. Hurry is not compatible with getting there. I have plenty of gas, but if something happens, nobody else is going to come along and find us.”

She put the car in gear, decided to leave the 4-ways on, and edged forward into the storm.

“We could stop somewhere and call,” Susan suggested hopefully.

“We could. Let’s think about that. There aren’t any more stations on this highway before we get to my friend’s exit. If we get off the highway to find a phone, then we’d have to wait for an ambulance to get out here. If one can get through. They might, if a snowplow came along with it. It would take time to arrange, if it would be done at all. I have no idea whether they would do that. Bet it would take an hour, anyway, to get everything organized. Then there would be the time it would take to get here. Probably another hour. And where would you be in the meantime? A gas station? Someone’s house? Sitting in my car running the gas out? I believe that in less than an hour, we will be at Mary’s house, which is in a direct line between here and the nearest hospital. It’s my opinion that that’s the fastest way to get official help. So decide, before we get to the next exit.”

“So you’re saying that the nearest hospital is an hour away.”

“At least. It’s about 50 miles. On these roads - well, I’m doing about 30, and I doubt that anyone would go any faster. So maybe more like two hours.

“Well, I still think we should stop and call as soon as possible,” Susan insisted.

Unexpectedly, Bob cut in. “No,” he said, unequivocally, “by the time they got here, if it keeps snowing, it wouldn’t be possible to get back again.”

Bob hesitated and Ellen put in, “They’d have something, yes. But they may not have facilities for two. I think ambulances these days are set up for one person. Also, there’d be no place for you two. You’d have to sit in a gas station, if there was one open, which I doubt, or depend on some nice neighbor, which is possible, or come with me anyway, ‘cuz I’m not sitting there all night and however bloody long it is after that ‘til the roads clear.”

“Oh.”

“And if you stayed with the neighbor, you’d still be stuck out here when the ambulance finally did go on to the hospital.”

“Arranging for transportation wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Well, your choice, but here’s the exit. On or off?”

“On,” Bob said decisively. “We’ll go as far as you’re willing to take us.”

Ellen drove in silence for a minute, then Bob asked, “How far did you say?”

“About 25 miles to Mary’s house. At this rate we’ll get there in about an hour, but it’s getting worse. I’m going to have to slow down soon, just because it’s getting hard to tell where the road is. Twenty beyond that to the city.”

“I can’t even see past the hood.”

Ellen grinned humorlessly. “You get used to looking past the snowfall. If it just doesn’t come down harder, it’ll be okay.”

“So,” Bob was busy with his timeline, content to let the driver do the driving, “an hour to your friend’s house, and then we call an ambulance. That should take them another hour to get out there, right?”

“Probably.”

“And another hour to get back to the hospital. We’re talking three hours here, at least. I don’t know about this freezing stuff.” He hesitated, not wanting to admit the possibility of disaster by giving words to it.

“Are you asking whether that will be too late?”

“Yeah,” his voice rough, barely able to get it out.

Ellen sighed. “I’m being told they’ll live.” She waffled over whether to say more, took a deep breath and dove in. “Understand me. I am coming here tonight to work at a psychic fair this weekend. I’m a working psychic, and I feel ... let me put it this way. I wasn’t supposed to be on this road. I missed my regular turn. And I wasn’t supposed to be here at this time, but I got started late.

“I feel a rightness here. No matter how it turns out, it will have been right for all involved. If one or both of them should die, then that’s how it was meant to be, and nothing you or I could have done would change that.”

There was silence for a moment. Ellen felt the tension, felt that she should have been more reassuring.

“But I believe in God,” she added softly, “be that he, she, it, or otherwise, and I believe that God sent me to get you. And I believe that they’ll be all right.”

“You mentioned burning the skin,” Susan persisted, apparently preferring to dismiss the grimmer possibilities and focus on the more mundane. “Are you saying that touching their faces could leave permanent scars? How likely is that?”

Ellen was irritated by the light dismissal of her somber reflections. “Let’s just settle for alive,” she growled.

Ellen thought carefully before replying. At least Susan was noticing something important! So she answered slowly and calmly, “Okay, don’t panic. Not breathing doesn’t mean they’re dead. Frequently people revive from freezing when even a hospital can’t detect any breathing. Try this; without touching skin, hold your finger under a nose.”

“Okay. I don’t feel any breath.”

“Do you feel any heat?”

“Yes, a little.”

“Okay. He’s breathing. Don’t give up hope.”

They drove in silence for a long time. The falling snow became thicker, heavier as the minutes ticked away, as the storm moved in and the air became warmer. It got to be almost impossible to see farther than the hood of the car, and Bob was certain several times that the car was actually going off the road. He was smart enough to mostly keep quiet except for an occasional comment: “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Or “How can you tell where the road is?” Ellen was patient with him, understanding the helplessness of sitting in the passenger seat. Her primary fear was that the snow would get too deep for the car to plow through. It was snowing harder, faster, and was actually worse than she’d ever driven in before, with the iciness under the new snow. Whatever had she been thinking heading out on a hundred mile trip with the weather warnings there had been? But if she hadn’t these people would still be out there, wouldn’t they? Or would God have had a back-up plan?

She prayed silently most of the way. Surrounding herself with light, calming her mind, visualizing a tunnel of light down the road that guided her and kept the car safe. Her whole being was an internal concentration, focused on the whiteness that wasn’t really penetrated by her headlights.

“It must be nearly a foot deep,” Bob commented.

“Two feet, more like. I can feel the drag on the car. I’m sure it’s over the bumper. I just hope there aren’t any real hills, ‘cause it isn’t going up one.”

Snow. Whiteness. Once she thought she may have left the road when she plowed through a drift, but the smooth white path re-emerged. Occasionally now, they would pass a car-shaped lump of snow.

“We’re getting close now.” Ellen heaved a sigh. “Now there’s something else to think about. You should obviously go to a hospital. I don’t know what condition the city is in. It may not be possible to get to one.” She snapped on the radio. “Becky, find a local station to get the weather.”

They traveled again in silence except for the radio. The car-lumps were more frequent, almost lining the road where there was any hill at all. Becky commented on it.

“It’s from before it really started snowing,” Ellen theorized. “It’s awfully slippery under there, and a lot of cars would just simply not have made it up the hills. They end up clogging it up so that other people don’t make it. It’s actually less slippery now than it was, or I wouldn’t be getting through, either.”

It wasn’t long before the radio began to broadcast road conditions. The city was closed down; the streets were clogged with buried cars; people were stranded at work. The plows would not be out tonight, nor probably tomorrow, since it promised to keep right on snowing. Finally, Ellen turned it off.

“Okay,” she sighed, “it’s like this. I really meant to take you right on to the hospital, but One, I expect the car to just stop getting through the snow any moment now and Two, I’ve seen cities clogged with stranded cars. It wouldn’t be possible to get through even if we got there.

”So, I’m stopping at Mary’s. You can try calling an ambulance. I don’t think you’ll get one. Much less two. You’re welcome to stay. I don’t see that you have any option. And I will do everything I can for your boys.”

“Shut up!” Ellen yelled. Then she took a deep breath. “Do your yelling, blaming, and recriminations some other time. I don’t want to hear it.” Silence reigned again.

“Anyway, we’re here.” She turned in to a driveway where a house light was just barely visible through the snow. “Now listen,” she stopped the car, put it in park, “First, I’ll get two blankets from the trunk and put them in here. Then Becky and I will go in to tell Mary what to expect and get the hide-a-bed set up. I’ll come back and get one of the boys, like before, and Bob will get the other one. But they need to be completely wrapped in the blankets, especially faces. They’ll be just slightly warmer than they were when we started, and they must not get colder again, even for the minute it takes to get in the house.”

Mary opened the door quickly to the knock. “Ellen. I’ve been worried. Hi, Becky. Come on in.” Her guests stepped through and closed the door, but didn’t take off coats.

“There’s kind of an emergency …” Ellen began.

“There are two frozen people in the car!” Becky interrupted.

“What?”

“She makes it sound like an adventure,” Ellen replied. “There are two frozen people in the car. They ought to be in the hospital, but there’s no way of getting there tonight.” She looked Mary in the eye. “They may not make it.”

“Well, bring them in! What are you waiting for?”

“Well, I thought we could put one in my bed in the guest room, and the other one on the sofa-bed in the living room. We need to get that out. Becky, why don’t you start doing that? Quickly?” Becky began throwing cushions off the couch.

“You’ve worked in hospitals a lot of years,” Ellen returned to Mary. “Do you know anything about hypothermia?

“No, I really don’t. Mostly all I do is draw blood, and I never had a patient with hypothermia.”

“Then I thought you could get on the internet and see what you can dig up. There’s a website I found last year. If you do a google search … let’s see, what did I search on? I think I used ‘medical’ and ‘freezing’. Try that. It gets you some kind of Army/Navy handbook.”

“Okay. I’ll just get this bed ready first.” Mary turned to help Becky.

“Oh, also. It’s really cold, and you usually don’t keep the heat very high, but I’d like to turn it up.”

“Okay. The thermostat’s over there.” Ellen found the control and pushed it up to ninety. The furnace probably wouldn’t get it that warm, but it was a small house, and she could go for max. Then she headed back outside. “Becky, mind the door, would you?”

Ellen opened the back door of the car, again picked up the boy, finding him considerably heavier now. It was all she could do to stagger to the door with him and kick for Becky to open it. Probably the adrenalin has worn off, she thought. She hurried back to the guest room and collapsed with him on the bed. Standing up, she considered a moment, then went back out to the living room, where Bob was just laying the other boy on the mattress. Susan was already reaching for the blanket.

“Don’t take the blanket off,” she advised.

“He’ll need more air,” Susan asserted.

“No, he won’t,” Ellen contradicted, in her no-nonsense voice. “Barely breathing, remember? Very little oxygen needed yet. He needs the blanket over his face because it’s only about 65 degrees in here, and we hope that they are warmer than that.”

“What do you mean?”

Ellen was really exasperated with this woman. She seemed to have no understanding at all. “To spell it out,” she said, enunciating every word. “We have no idea how cold they are, but since they’re barely breathing, then there is barely any circulation. There is nothing to pump heat to the face. My guess is that since we can detect breathing, they are at least 80 degrees, which is the only reason that I can hope that they might make it without a hospital. Since the air in the room is 65, his body is warmer than the room, and the insulation is preferable to hold the heat in. Does that make it any clearer to you?”

“Yes. I see.”

“Good. And just to be perfectly clear, I intend to make it warmer in here than they are, and then we’ll take the clothes off. Got it?”

Susan looked rather more abashed at that than seemed necessary. “All of them?”

“All of their clothes? Of course.”

Susan and Bob exchanged a look. “It doesn’t seem as though that should be necessary,” Bob put in reasonably.

Why were these people so obtuse? She drew a deep breath, lest she lose her temper. “Look, we won’t do what isn’t necessary. I’m just trying to think ahead.” Then, more forcefully, “But if I think you’re risking their lives, I’ll put you out in a snowbank, parents or not.”

Again that exchanged look. Bob said, “What makes you think you can handle this better than we can?”

“All right, fair question. I’m not a doctor. I’m not even a nurse. But I’ve obviously had a whole lot more experience with being cold than you have.” She paused, shrugged, allowed her hands to wave dismissively in the air. “You’re the guys that let them drink because they were cold. That one I just can’t believe!”

Mary, just returning from the computer in her bedroom, cried out, startled, “They what!”

Deciding that the situation in the living room was stable for the moment, Ellen headed back to the bedroom, Becky trailing behind. “The boys had been drinking beer in the car, can you believe. Found anything on the ‘net yet?”

“I think I’ve got the article you were looking for printing out. I wondered why they were in such bad shape and the parents weren’t.”

“Well, the parents are also a whole lot bigger. Takes a lot longer to lose that much body heat. But I expect the beer put it over the top.”

“Is this the one? Says ‘Virtual Naval Hospital’.”

“That’s the one. There it is - Accidental Hypothermia. If I remember correctly, there’s no hurry, as long as things don’t get worse. I want to read that thoroughly before we do anything else.”

“Print a copy for the parents?”

“Yeah, print one. I don’t think they’ll read it. There’s something …well, odd, about them. But print off the stuff on frostbite, too. I think that gives a different perspective.”